In-Between Days

In-Between Days: A Memoir About Living with Cancer by Teva Harrison
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A simple and honest illustrated memoir of Teva's reality of living with cancer. She doesn't shy away from the hard parts, but also takes time to highlight the ways she holds on to her hope and keeps going. Just because you are dying doesn't mean you can't live. Best of all, as she says in the preface, Teva gives voice to the fears that many terminal cancer patients have and encourages them to talk to their family, friends, doctors, and other loved ones. "I've since learned that it's the unspoken that is most frightening. Shining a light on my experiences takes some of the power away from the bogeyman that is my cancer. I'm taking my power back."

On hope, she says: "Hope is a dangerous thing. It's absolutely crucial all the time, or I couldn't go on. I am a naturally optimistic person, and I am inclined to hope for the moon. But I can't put too much hope in any one thing. ...I have to find a way to balance the hope I need to get up every day the pragmatism I need to deal with bad news." So much of what Teva says resonates with me. We are of a similar age (I just turned 37), and her outlook on life and hope feels very similar to mine. It's a constant balance between hopeful optimism and the certainty of impending doom. Reading Teva's words fortifies me, and gives me strength to battle through my own struggles, small as they may be in comparison.

I particularly like what Teva had to say about prayer. As an atheist, she doesn't believe in an afterlife, as much as she tries, and so it would be understandable if she wrote off people when they offer prayers for her. "And yet," she says, "every time someone tells me that they're praying for me, I say thank you, and I mean it. I can't explain how it is that I believe that this will help or the depth of gratitude that I feel for the people who keep me in their thoughts in those personal sacred moments." As a person of faith, that gives me hope that when I tell someone I am praying for them, regardless of their personal beliefs, it means something to them and provides some level of comfort, if nothing else.

I'm so grateful Teva shared moments of her family history with us, as well. The women in her family seem remarkable, and the legacy they have left for her of strength and endurance, of doing everything you can for the world, is strikingly evident. "What is it that we leave when we go, except the impressions we've made on the people we've loved and who loved us?" Of her granny, Teva says, "her memory is a potent reminder that, big and scary as this disease can be, I'm much more than my cancer, too."

I can't say that Teva's personal art style is my favorite, but I'm also sure that doesn't actually matter in a work like this. Her words have so much power and you can feel the strength flowing through the lines of the art of each page. Each drawing holds such truth, and the catharsis that was generated through their creation shines through.

There are so many more things I could share from this book - it really is worth the hour or two of your time it would take to read it. As a final moment of note, and a good thing to remember as we live each day: "So I did what I could. That's what we all do, stumbling through each day as best we can, trying to live up to our own ideals of kindness and caring."

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